From Exile to Idol: Rufino Tamayo at 91

By MARK A. UHLIG, Special to The New York Times

Published: December 27, 1990

MEXICO CITY—
It is hard to imagine Rufino Tamayo anywhere but in his Mexican homeland, which now adores him. Rich in pre-Hispanic colors and symbolism, his paintings have deeper roots in local culture than those of perhaps any other Mexican artist. At the age of 91, moreover, he has become a living monument to his country's artistic achievements: His works set benchmark prices at international auctions, his name adorns one of Mexico's finest art museums and his fame has been multiplied by such glittering events as this year's celebration of Mexican art in New York City.

But for Mr. Tamayo (pronounced tah-MY-oh), who spent years at odds with his country's politically rigid artistic community, the recognition that he is considered Mexico's greatest living painter is not without a certain irony. And his stature is a vindication of the artistic independence that forced him into years of self-imposed exile from his homeland.

"I have always said that liberty was the most fundamental element of art," Mr. Tamayo said in a recent interview at his home in Mexico City. "I left Mexico precisely because I wasn't content with the limitations that were placed on Mexican painting."

Born in the southern state of Oaxaca, one of the Mexican regions most heavily influenced by native Indian culture, Mr. Tamayo has long based his work in a deep appreciation for pre-Columbian art and the extensions of it, freely adopting its forms, themes and colors in his own paintings.

"My intention is to continue the Mexican tradition, and by that I mean pre-Hispanic art," he said, seated among the vast collection of indigenous sculptures, masks and paintings he has amassed over the decades.

"Some artists believe they are following a Mexican tradition because their models are Mexican, but that would mean that any foreigner who paints an Indian could be considered Mexican," he said. "The point is to search for plastic elements that are very characteristic of Mexico and to use them; not in the way they were used in the past, but with a more open, more universal sensibility."

In the 1920's and 30's, that approach placed Mr. Tamayo in immediate sympathy with Picasso and other non-Mexican artists whose work he came to admire. But it left him in sharp conflict with his Mexican peers, politically committed leftist artists like Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siquieros and the others in the Mexican Muralist school, whose doctrinaire approach dominated Mexican painting and left Mr. Tamayo convinced that he had to leave the country to pursue his art. Of a Single Commitment

"I had difficulties with the Muralists, to the point that they accused me of being a traitor to my country for not following their way of thinking," said Mr. Tamayo, a tall distinguished man with thick white hair. "But my only commitment is to painting. That doesn't mean I don't have personal political positions. But those positions aren't reflected in my work. My work is painting."

Leaving Mexico City for his first visit to New York in 1926, Mr. Tamayo found that his political estrangement from Mexico was a blessing in disguise, opening broad new horizons of artistic education and experience that were to keep him in the United States and Europe for a total of more than 20 years in the next three and a half decades.

"I went to New York to get to know what painting really was," said Mr. Tamayo, who taught art at the Dalton School in Manhattan among other jobs for several years. "We were blind here, and New York made me aware of all the trends and currents that existed in those years. It showed me what art was."

With the help of his wife, Olga, a former concert pianist who proved to be as skilled and dedicated to managing and selling his work as he was to creating it, Mr. Tamayo quickly gained international stature, drawing particular attention for his innovative composition and original use of colors, including bright oranges, earthy reds and deep, pastel blues. The couple then moved to Paris, finally permanently returning to Mexico in the early 1960's.

Mr. Tamayo says he admires artists including Jackson Pollock and the Mexican painter Maria Izquierdo, with whom he once shared a studio. But he has remained firmly attached to his esthetic roots in Mexico. Feelings, Not Intellect

No one familiar with the clean lines and distinctive proportions of pre-Columbian sculpture can fail to recognize their inventive expression in Mr. Tamayo's constructed figures and pure tones. Similarly, his choice of themes centers on the fundamental relationships of man to man and man to nature that have dominated Mexico's indigenous art for thousands of years.

"The important part is the senses, not the intellect," he said of his focus on composition and color rather than on subject matter. "Painting and sculpture and architecture enter through the eyes, and that is the place to begin to understand what they are. The essential goal in the plastic arts is to educate the eyes."

Hindered by recent illnesses, including heart surgery in November 1989, Mr. Tamayo has not painted for several months. He normally devotes himself to his art in a small, airy studio attached to his house, which he designed himself in the late-1960's. These days, he lacks the strength to put in the eight-hour days of painting that once prompted him to describe himself as an artistic laborer.

But he and his wife, who have no children, remain active with a broad range of cultural and charitable undertakings, including a museum of pre-Hispanic art in Oaxaca, which Mr. Tamayo started with 1,300 pieces from his personal collection.

A similar donation was instrumental in the creation of the highly regarded Rufino Tamayo Museum nine years ago in the lush Chapultepec Park in Mexico City, although the Tamayos have not played a central role in its direction since experiencing frictions with private-sector museum officials in the mid-1980's. The museum is now administered by the Mexican Government through the National Institute of Fine Arts. Reflections in the Sun

Sharing a luncheon recently on their sunny patio with a handful of friends, the Tamayos showed little sign of dimming the intellectual and creative fire that has sustained their partnership, and art, for the better part of a century.

Asked which period of his long career he would, in retrospect, consider his best, Mr. Tamayo scarcely paused.

"The next one, I hope," he said, breaking into a smile.

Photo: The painter Rufino Tamayo at his home in Mexico City. (Homero Aridjis for The New York Times)